


paint it over

by WDW



Series: village hidden in the plot bunnies [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Feelings, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Identity Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, and less romance and more 'three broken teacups who deserve each other at this point', extremely slow-burn relationship tags, it's 2kgayteen i'm allowed to be melodramatic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-08-28 02:14:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16714621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WDW/pseuds/WDW
Summary: The Kannabi Bridge mission goes differently.Blinded and dying, Kakashi makes Obito promise to take his sword and carry on his legacy.  Traumatized, more than slightly mentally unhinged, and in possession of a brand new and untested Mangekyō, Obito takes the promise to heart in the worst way possible.In the wake of Pein's attack on Konoha, a man wakes up in front of a roaring campfire.  It's not Hatake Sakumo who greets him.[in which everything's worse, except when it's not.aka 'it really is a fix-it fic, i swear!']





	1. why didn't you stop me

**Author's Note:**

> i'm back on my bullshit. it's been a long time, y'all
> 
> this has been ruminating in my head since 2012 (the dark ff.net times, if this seems familiar) but i finally got to the point where i think i can put together a decent story about the idea. still won't be the most coherent fic, but i figured i might as well set it out into the wild before it takes over my brain more
> 
> title from mitski
> 
> inspired by [beware, here lies heavy spoilers]:  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5620914/1/Gift  
> and  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8529034/1/Underneath-the-Underneath

In the dark of the cave, Rin can't see Obito's eyes or his face but she can hear him clearly, the small, fearful hitches of his breath coming in staccato. He's kneeling by the boulder, head bowed, holding onto the limp hand like it's a port in a storm.

"Kakashi," Obito begs. "Kakashi, wake _up_."

Their teammate stirs, and something twists sharply in Rin's gut.

She had hoped he had already gone. She had hoped that he hadn't felt it.

"Obito?" Kakashi murmurs distantly. He tries to turn his head, and can't. It sounds like there's something wet at the back of his throat.

"I can't - I can't _see_ you, Obito." There's fear in his voice, edged by an even more uncharacteristic panic. "Where are you? _Where's Rin?_ "

It's only then that Rin notices the red-tinged clear liquid seeping out from underneath Kakashi's single uncovered eyelid, how it dribbles thickly down his face and pools darkly where it meets the navy blue cloth of his face mask.

Her heart sinks.

She reaches out, curls her fingers around his arm. "We're here," Rin says clearly, calmly, because she refuses to let Kakashi hear even a bit of the fear and horror that has begun to take up leaden weight in her gut. "We're right here, and we're not leaving."

He sags in relief at her touch, sharp-edged hysteria smoothing out into something unfairly soft.

"It's - it's so dark, Rin," he says, and she flinches.

Kakashi sounds terrified and small, in a way that she just can't associate with the aloof genius she had called her teammate for so long. For the first time, Rin remembers that he is younger than her and Obito. Not by much, just a few years, but now it felt like everything.

"It's okay," Rin says, even though it's really, really not. "It's okay, we're here with you."

It's the wrong thing to say, she realizes later with the perfect vision of hindsight. Because Kakashi stills, and even though between the rock and the mask just a sliver of his expression is visible, she thinks she can see a terrible sort of understanding bloom over his face.

"...It's not dark, is it?" Kakashi says dully. " I'm blind." He's quiet for a moment. "I'm dying."

She squeezes his arm, and it's the only reply she can bring herself to give.

"It's my fault," Obito says suddenly, his voice choked. He curls into Kakashi's limp hand like it's a gut wound. "I made you come back. You were gonna go and finish the mission like we were supposed to, but instead you came back and lost your eye to save me. And now, you're -"

"Idiot."

Kakashi is all soft voice and disdain, even through the pain.

"Do you really think you can make me do anything?" He says flatly. "I _chose_ to come back, Obito. I chose this."

They're quiet for a moment, all three of them.

"But it shouldn't have been you," Obito whispers, voice small. "It _can't_ have been you, Kakashi. It's not _fair_. You're the genius, you're the one everyone calls the best of our generation, you were supposed to survive everything and become a legend just like the White Fang!"

The smile Kakashi gives through his mask is almost a grimace. "Then I guess," he says, and wheezes in another weak breath. "I guess those are your shoes to fill now, Obito."

A strange shudder goes through Obito at those words. His expression goes terrifyingly blank. Rin sees it all even though Kakashi does not, and she knows in a way she cannot explain that something has gone terribly wrong.

"You should go," Kakashi says quietly, and Rin recognizes his forced, false calm like she's looking into a mirror. "Our enemies have back-up coming, and they'll be here any moment. You know that."

"But -"

"So _leave_ me."

"I can't," Obito says dully. He doesn't, _can't_ look Rin in the eyes.

Kakashi lets out a slow breath. "Obito," he says. "I saved your life, right? That means in some sense, it's mine. You _owe_ me."

"Yeah," Obito says, hiccuping. "Yeah, Bakashi."

"Then _go_ ," Kakashi says with an intensity Rin doesn't think he could still muster. "Because I want you to take my blade with you, and carry on that legacy. I can't do it myself, so you have to do it for me."

"But -"

" _Promise me._ "

Obito is quiet for a long moment before he says, something strange and distant in his voice, "Okay."

Then, "But you have to take my eye."

Rin jolts, looks between the two of them like she can find her answer there.

"I never gave you a gift for your promotion," Obito says, looking up for the first time, and his eyes are the _red red red_ of the Sharingan but the dark pattern in them is something she has never seen before. They're shining with tears.

"I won't leave you in the dark, Kakashi."

"If you give me your eye," Kakashi says slowly, carefully, like he's testing the words, "you'll never reach your full potential. You'll never be as strong as you would be with both your Sharingan. You _know_ that."

Obito doesn't hesitate for even a second. "You didn't need the Sharingan to be great. I won't either."

And then he says, before Kakashi can protest again, " _Please_. Let me see the future for you, Kakashi. Even if that's into the afterlife."

The sharp shock in Kakashi's expression softens into an emotion that Rin cannot describe with words.

"Alright," he says at last. "Alright, Obito."

* * *

 

The operation takes forty-five minutes from beginning to end. 

Rin's hands shake only once.

* * *

 

When they leave Kakashi behind, they feel the weight of his new Sharingan on their backs until the very end.


	2. you know me better than i do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional tags! won't come up for a while longer, but wanted to give you all an idea of what to expect

Obito doesn't say a single word as they stagger away from where Kakashi is still pinned and bleeding out under the rocks. He doesn't make a sound when the rest of the Iwa nin emerge from hiding, not even as they fight them side-by-side with the raw desperation of children with nothing left to lose.

When Minato-sensei finally shows up, his expression flashes from hope to horror to fury all in a matter of seconds. It takes him even less time than that to slaughter their attackers in what could never be considered a fair fight. Still, Rin has been through too much war to look at the bodies and feel anything other than relief.

The moment the coast is clear, Minato-sensei runs to them. There's urgency in his voice when he asks, "Where's Kakashi?"

Rin can't help but go still.

She doesn't know what to say. There's just the cold burn of guilt and the slow numbness of horror as reality finally, finally sets in.

...There's a new leaden weight of Minato-sensei's clear blue gaze as he takes a step back, and she knows he knows. How could he not, with Rin's sleeves soaked in dark blood and Obito with his single eye?

But Rin tells him about the rock, and what came afterwards. Minato-sensei is quiet, and she thinks that might be worse than anything else he could have done.

She knows that Kakashi had been Minato-sensei's student for far longer than they had, ever since he had made chuunin at six. Even though their sensei is not the kind of man who chose favorites, especially amongst students, Rin cannot help but wonder how it feels to lose your very first.

Then Minato-sensei looks over at Obito, _really_ looks at him, and flinches.

She follows his gaze, tries to see him as Minato-sensei is - Obito, with his eyelid sunken in over his missing eye and his terrifying blankness, like he's catatonic on his feet. He hasn't even looked up since the fighting ended.

"Rin, what happened to Obito?"

She tries to explain what had happened down in that cave, but words aren't enough to convey everything she needs Minato-sensei to know. "Kakashi couldn't see," she says uncertainly, and then, "Obito wanted to give him a present for making jounin." The facts come out separate and weak even as she says them, even though when Rin had been performing the operation, that singular connected piece of knowledge had reinforced her nerves like steel.

"But that doesn't explain..."

Minato-sensei trails off, but it's more than enough for Rin to fill in the blanks.

Why Obito still isn't speaking. Why he's staring listlessly into nothing at all, disoriented and confused.

"Kakashi gave him his blade and told him to carry on his legacy," she says slowly, hesitantly. Minato-sensei's expression stiffens.

It's not an answer to his question, at least not one that makes any sort of logical sense. But Rin remembers the look that flashed over her best friend's face then, the strange blankness that seemed, for a moment, to have drained everything out of Obito that was _Obito_. How she had been so sure that there was something deeply not right about him then, and that the feeling hadn't gone away.

Just intensified.

She doesn't think she's wrong about that. She's rarely wrong about Obito, after all these years together.

"He made him _promise_ ," Rin repeats. "And Obito, he hasn't - he hasn't said anything since then."

"That's a heavy load to carry," Minato-sensei says heavily, and there's something about his expression that makes Rin think he's not saying everything that he knows.

He takes a step forward, closer to where Obito has not moved an inch. He leans down and says, "Hey, kiddo."

Obito stares, dark eye unblinking.

"It wasn't your fault, what happened to Kakashi," Minato-sensei says. "I know he didn't blame you either. That's why he gave you the legacy of the White Fang. He trusted that you would make him proud. Him and the White Fang both."

"But I do want you to know..." He goes quiet. "Trying to uphold that legacy wasn't kind to him. Kakashi wouldn't want that for you. He wouldn't want that legacy to overshadow your own path."

Obito doesn't reply. He doesn't do anything at all.

Minato-sensei stands back up, and there's something deeply tired in the set of his shoulders and the slope of his back.

"Minato-sensei, what's - what's wrong?"

"We need to take him back to Konoha," he says, voice carefully blank.

"Can they fix him?"

The words spill out before she can stop them, before she can reprimand herself over how stupid of a thing it is to say. Rin lets out a breath, looks away, swallows down the tears that threaten to follow her outburst. Obito isn't something to be fixed, isn't something to be taken apart and put together again, he was a person and -

\- and she wanted him to be himself again, for maybe the most selfish reason she can think of.

No one else knew what had happened in that cave, no one else had felt the raw gutting sensation that came with seeing Kakashi reduced from hardened shinobi to an eleven year old boy afraid of the dark.

She didn't want to go through this alone. She wanted her best friend back.

But Minato-sensei's eyes are kind and his tone of voice is genuine if apologetic when he tells her, "I'm not sure, Rin."

Her heart stops. "What - what -"

"I don't know what made him like this," he says. "It could be the trauma of what happened. It could be the after-effects of an enemy jutsu. It could be some combination of the two. They'll do what they can."

Minato-sensei smiles, or at least tries to make a valiant attempt. "Don't worry, Rin. The Yamanaka are experienced with cases like this. I know it might be hard to believe, but things will be alright."

Rin looks at him for a long moment, and tries her best not to remember her own useless reassurements to Kakashi, down there in the cave.

But she believes him, because she doesn't know what she would do if she doesn't.

 

* * *

 

They make camp. They eat. They mourn, together and separate at once.

Obito sleeps like the dead and spends his days staring into nothing at all. He seems disoriented, confused, like he's unsure of his own body. Sometimes, it feels like he had left all of himself back in that cave instead of just an eye.

Minato-sensei gives him sad looks sometimes, when he thinks neither of them are looking.

Rin tries to talk to Obito, but there's nothing. She doesn't know how to feel when she looks at him. There's pity and concern and sadness and fear, all mixed together and coagulating.

But more than anything, there's anger.

It comes intertwined deeply with shame and denial, because she _shouldn't_ be feeling it. She shouldn't be looking at her practically catatonic teammate and have to resist the urge to shout at him, to yell in his face, to shake his shoulders hard and beg and cry and say, _I know it hurts._

Say, _It hurts for me too._

Say, _So why did you leave me to do this alone?_

So Rin spends a lot of time with Minato-sensei, who looks at her like he understands. They talk for hours about not much at all, finding smiles and laughter reminiscing and telling stories in the brief moments before reality creeps back into memory.

One of those nights by the campfire, Obito a dark lump curled up unmoving in the corner, Minato-sensei tells her about the White Fang.

He had told Obito the story earlier, before their team had split up to complete their separate missions, before Rin had been captured and Kakashi had been blinded and when Obito was still Obito. He wanted Obito to understand more about where Kakashi was coming from, he says, voice flat, lips pressed into a tense line.

There's guilt there, Rin realizes. For a moment, she wants to laugh. Minato-sensei is the last person she blames for what happened.

"It worked," she says, voice hard. She doesn't know exactly what she's saying and the words come out incoherent and in fragments, but they come out nonetheless. "It wasn't - it wasn't how you hoped, maybe. I think. But Kakashi and Obito - they _both_ came back for me."

Rin doesn't know exactly what had happened between the boys, after she was captured. Something tells her that Obito would have done anything to come back for her, and Kakashi would have done anything not to.

Unstoppable force meets unmovable object.

But the impossible had happened. And when Rin thinks back, about Obito clutching Kakashi's limp hand to his chest and begging him not to go, about Kakashi entrusting the boy he once called dead-last and idiot with the most important thing in his life, she thinks she knows how.

"When Kakashi was under that rock, he and Obito - they talked," Rin says slowly. "They understood each other. And Kakashi, he - he didn't try to act brave in front of us anymore."

"He let us hold his hand." She has to swallow down the heavy lump in her throat before she can keep going. "He let Obito give him his eye."

Minato-sensei is quiet for a long time. She can tell he's thinking. The angry boy he had practically raised wouldn't have done any of those things, wouldn't have shown vulnerability even at the very end.

The fact that Kakashi did...

"Thank you for telling me," Minato-sensei says, and means it. 

They sit for a moment, watching the dying fire and how its final few embers flicker in the ashes.

"You know, Rin," her sensei says gently. "It's not your fault either."

She opens her mouth, closes it again. Her first instinct is to protest, to argue, to pretend that Minato-sensei hadn't hit right on target like he always does.

"They came back to rescue _me_ ," is what Rin says at last. "I was the one who got captured and jeopardized the mission. If I was faster, if I had escaped earlier, then maybe -"

Then maybe Kakashi would be alive. Then maybe Obito would still have his sanity.

She looks down into her lap so she doesn't have to see Minato-sensei's pitying gaze. "I was supposed to protect them," she says. "I'm supposed to heal their wounds. I'm supposed to keep them _alive_."

"Rin, that's not -"

"But there was nothing I could do for Kakashi." Rin grimaces. "I didn't even _try_. Half of his body was crushed under that boulder and I wished - I even wished he had already died, at first, because I knew there was nothing I could do and I didn't want to see him suffer. What kind of teammate wishes for something like that? What kind of _friend_?"

"Rin."

She lets out a breath. "And now, there's nothing I can do for Obito."

"They wouldn't have blamed you."

"I know," Rin says, her voice strong. "That's why I'm blaming myself."

 

* * *

 

They make their long journey home with silence.

Minato-sensei is gone often. Rin knows there's a reason why. They need food and supplies, and someone has to go into the nearby civilian towns and villages. Someone has to scout ahead and check for enemies before they move camp as a team.

('Team'. What is a team with two people?)

But that means Rin spends the majority of her time alone. Technically Obito is there too, and her main responsibility is to make sure he's as alright as he can be.

But it hurts to look at him, her dead-eyed best friend, and she finds excuses not to. She leaves him at the campsite and trains at a distance, forming and reforming chakra in her hands, trying to refine their form into something sharp and corporeal enough to _cut_.

And then, one day, Obito slashes through his eye with a sharp kunai.

In hindsight, it's pure luck that Rin is there.

Not close enough to stop it, but close enough to tackle him bodily to the ground in the seconds afterwards and force the bloody weapon out of his suddenly slack hands.

She grabs him by the shoulder and presses green medical chakra onto the bleeding gash, teeth clenched with exertion, and -

It's with no small relief that she notices that Obito had actually cut right through the skin over his empty socket, and that his remaining eye is still there, there and _staring_. But it's a deep cut, and Rin knows like breathing that it will leave a scar.

"Why?" She hears herself begging, barely coherent. " _Why?_ "

"My life is Kakashi's," Obito says vacantly, voice low from disuse and so quiet that Rin thinks she imagined it.

Rin freezes. It's the first thing he has said in a week.

"What?" She breathes. "What - Obito, what does that _mean_?"

Then, Obito blinks. It's like he's waking up from a dream, the way consciousness returns to his eye, how his posture tenses just so slightly. He comes back to life underneath her hold, and the surprise makes her slacken her grip.

"Rin?" He asks, clearly disoriented, but when he looks at her there's recognition in his one red eye.

( _red red red_ like the Sharingan, _red red red_ like Kakashi's gaze on their backs)

Rin opens her mouth and closes it again. She doesn't know what to say, doesn't know how to put the whirlwind of thought and emotion in her head into coherent words. The hope she feels is like a beast in of itself, and it takes everything she has not to let it take control.

 _It's Obito_ , her heart cries, _he's okay,_ we're _okay_ -

But there's fresh blood over her hands that tells her it's not nearly so simple.

"Why - why did you _do_ that to yourself?" She demands, or maybe begs. "What were you _thinking_?"

Obito looks at her blankly. There's still blood trickling sluggishly from the cut over his eyelid.

"I didn't do this to myself, Rin," he says slowly, distinctly confused. His voice sounds strange, off in its intonation somehow, entirely wrong but _familiar_. "It was the Iwa nin, remember? I lost my eye saving Obito."

Rin _stares_. She does not understand.

"Obito," she whispers, mouth dry, "Obito, what are you _saying?_ "

He looks at her with something like pity. "Obito's dead, Rin," he says, and there's grief in his voice that's _wrong wrong wrong,_ and -

\- his Sharingan is spinning, that unfamiliar pattern whirring so quickly that it almost looked black -

and suddenly it's Kakashi she's holding down, peering up at her with one shocked dark eye. His silver hair spills over his hitai-ate and his face is whole and uncrushed, like the rock had never came down and broke him, _broke all of them_ -

Distantly, Rin realizes that she's screaming.

She stumbles backwards and away from him, and promptly trips on an upturned root. Rin hits the grassy ground so hard that it knocks the breath out of her lungs, but she can't look away.

Her hands tremble so hard that she can barely form the seal.

"Kai!" Rin shouts frantically, pleadingly, and _nothing happens._ " _Kai!_ "

"Rin?" says Kaka - says _Obito_ , a look of genuine concern in his eye. He takes a step towards her carefully, like she's the crazy one.

She focuses her chakra in her system and concentrates, with the same skill of technique that got her the second highest score in the Academy.

But nothing happens, Kakashi's still there, he's alive and standing and coming closer even as she's screaming, screaming _Kai!_ at the top of her lungs and scrambling backwards but the genjutsu is too strong or _it's not a genjutsu at all_ and just that thought closes up her throat and she can't _breathe_ -

Rin's back hits something hard.

She looks up, and it's Minato-sensei standing there, a three-pronged kunai clenched in his hand and his face bloodlessly pale as he stares at the boy in front of him.

He looks like he's seen a ghost.

"Sensei," Kakashi says worriedly, "I think there's something wrong with Rin."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D
> 
> (thoughts, reactions, predictions - everything is appreciated! let me reply to your comments hehehe)


	3. i look for a picture of you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit of a confusing chapter, with the sections alternating between flashbacks (indicated through right justification - if that's off-putting, let me know and i'll find another way to show them! just didn't want to throw italics on 60% of the chapter ahahaha

A month after Team Minato returns to the village with one less member, Rin rounds the corner by her apartment and walks right into the last person she wants to see.

She stumbles backwards a step and drops her grocery bag. The flimsy plastic splits the instant it hits the ground.

Rin had been planning on making curry for a big meal and then to freeze, like she always did at the start of the month. They both look on as her onions roll out into the street.

For a moment, all Rin can think about is how much she hates onions. She never ate them, had always spent a good portion of every meal picking them out of her food and carefully piling them up on the side. But for the sake of a certain onion-loving best friend, she had endured.

She had forgotten that she didn't need to get them this time.

"I'm sorry," the boy says unsurely. Even his awkwardness came hesitantly. "I thought you knew I was there."

Rin tries not to meet the heavy gaze of his one dark eye. "It's alright," she says stiffly, and bends to gather her vegetables into her arms.

An uncomfortably long moment passes before he realizes his mistake and squats down to help. He hands her a bag of carrots with just a bit too much intensity, and if things were any different Rin would have giggled at the careful concentration on his face, obvious even through his mask.

But things were not any different.

She says bluntly, "What are you doing here, Kakashi?"

The direct address makes him shrink back, and it's completely unlike him. _This_ him.

"I need to talk to you about Obito," he says.

 

* * *

 

Minato-sensei comes out of the interrogation room with a slump to his shoulders and an odd expression that Rin had never seen on his face before. If it was anyone else, she would have said it was a dull shock, the kind that comes with being entirely out of one's depth. But this was _Minato-sensei_ , and connecting that with the most analytical and rational person she knows feels entirely impossible.

"Sensei!" Rin exclaims, and she can't help the relief in her voice because regardless of everything else, it had been _hours_ since Minato-sensei and the Yamanaka had gone in. She's already scrambling up from the uncomfortable wooden waiting chair when he motions for her to sit back down.

"Rin," Minato-sensei says quietly, and it's only looking at him now that she really notices the paleness of his face, the bloodlessness of his clenched fists. "I need you to tell me again about everything that happened at Kannabi Bridge and afterwards."

She opens her mouth, then closes it again. "...Minato-sensei?"

"It's important," he says. Then, " _Please_ , Rin."

Rin trusts her sensei enough not to make him explain, not now when he seemed like he was on the verge of a breakdown. "Okay," she whispers, still staring at him with wide eyes, and does.

She tells him about Kakashi and Obito talking it out when she was captured, how they came back for her even though it was against all protocol. About the rock coming down, and the quiet moments in the dark right after. Then, how she had given one of Obito's strange, strange Sharingan to Kakashi so that they could still be connected, so that Kakashi wouldn't have to be alone in the end.

"I know unnecessary medical procedures are against protocol," Rin says, all in a rush. "And Obito's told me about how his many rules his clan has to maintain the secrecy of their doujutsu. But Kakashi was dying, and Obito begged, and - if there's a punishment for what we did, please tell the council that I was the one who -"

"That won't be needed, Rin." An odd expression passes over Minato-sensei's face. "I haven't submitted an official report just yet. Right now, no one knows that Obito gave Kakashi his Sharingan."

"But," Rin says, entirely confused, and then it hits her. The Kakashi who returned to the village didn't have a Sharingan.

And, as far as anyone knew, Obito never returned at all.

Rin and Minato-sensei had played along as well as they could all the way back to Konoha, once it became obvious what was going on could not be so easily resolved. _Obito slashed right through his eye because it interfered with his delusions_ , Minato-sensei had told her then, a grim look on his face. _What else would he do?_

They couldn't risk pushing him further, not when they were still out in the field, not when they had the exhausted manpower of two and none of the dedicated resources of their village to help.

But, with them back in the village and Obito already taken in for examination, how was it still possible that no one else knew the truth?

"What - what happened in there?"

The look on Minato-sensei's face is unreadable for the most part, but there's a grimness to it when he tells her, "The Yamanaka couldn't find anything wrong with him."

Rin stares. "But," she says in an odd half-giggle, because she _doesn't understand_. "But he thinks he's _Kakashi_."

"So do they," Minato-sensei says.

 

* * *

 

Rin's mind goes blank. She doesn't want to have this conversation today. She thinks maybe it's a conversation that she never wants to have.

"I'm not the one you should talk to about that," Rin starts saying, her voice carefully neutral. "Minato-sensei -"

"I know you blame me," he says quietly, and her mouth snaps shut.

Rin looks at him again, takes in the steeliness of his expression and the barely hidden tension in the way he holds himself.

"I don't blame you," she says, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. "It wasn't your -"

"I'm not stupid. I see the way you look at me," he says flatly, cutting through her words like a newly sharpened blade. "And I see the way you try _not_ to look at me."

Rin winces. He had always been too perceptive for his own good. "It's not like that," she tells him, and she can never tell him why it's not a lie.

"I know it's my fault Obito's gone, Rin," he tells her, matter-of-fact. "You don't have to pretend for my sake that you don't think so too."

Something about the vehemence of the statement makes her go quiet.

Because he's right. Just not in the way he thinks.

 

* * *

 

For a moment, the words don't compute.

"But that can't - he's _Obito_ ," Rin says, and the words sound stupid even to her own ears. "Didn't they look into his mind? Can't they break the genjutsu he cast on himself? How could they not find anything? How can they not _tell_?"

"They found no genjutsu," Minato-sensei says, voice unreadable. "When they looked into his mind, he knew everything he should, and nothing he shouldn't."

He takes a breath, lets it out slowly. "Rin, he summoned Pakkun to prove his identity."

Her mind makes the connections before her consciousness catches up. Kakashi had raised Pakkun since he was a puppy, Obito didn't have any summons contract signed with dogs, Obito would never have been able to -

It feels like the world is falling away underneath her feet.

"But," she says blankly. "But we left Kakashi under the rock."

"Rin -"

"And - I saw Obito, _you_ saw Obito," she rambles, the words coming out all in a rush because it doesn't make sense, _nothing_ makes sense. "Sensei, you were there when we first got out. The Yamanaka can look into our minds, we can prove it to them -"

" _Rin._ " And there's hands on her shoulders now, holding her steady. Under the weight of Minato-sensei's blue eyes, it suddenly feels impossible to speak. "What would that prove to them? What do you want them to do?"

One moment it feels like there's too many words to say, the very next there's nothing left. "I - I don't know. Maybe if they believe us, then they can make Obito remember who he really is."

"And," Minato-sensei says, "what if they can't?"

Rin freezes. There's something off about the way her sensei says those words. He's too certain about it. It sends a chill down her back.

"Sensei, what are you saying?"

A look passes over Minato-sensei's face, and in that moment it hits her that he knows much, much more than she does. "I asked a favor from Kushina," he says quietly, "and I spoke to Uchiha Mikoto."

She flinches. Obito never liked his clan, had always felt like they had something against him, and Rin had always been on Obito's side. No matter what.

"I didn't tell her what happened," Minato-sensei reassures. "Though... I wouldn't be surprised if she suspects - ah, well. It doesn't matter now. But I went to ask her about the strange pattern you saw in Obito's Sharingan."

He pauses then, so subtle that she almost doesn't notices it. "Rin, have you ever heard about the Mangekyō Sharingan?"

"No," she says hesitantly. "No, Obito never mentioned anything like that."

"He wouldn't have. It's a clan secret, from what I gathered, and I got the sense that even Obito hadn't been told before he -" Minato-sensei goes quiet. "...I suspect the only reason she even told me that much was because she wanted to know how Obito got it. After all, despite how powerful it is, the number of confirmed wielders in the entire history of the clan can be counted on one hand."

Her eyes widen despite herself. "That few?"

"It makes sense once you realize that it drives its users insane," says Minato-sensei, calm in a way that did not fit the gravity of his words. "Though, I have to wonder about causation versus correlation. After all, it's rumored that you must kill your best friend to get it."

Her world narrows into a pinhole, and for a moment the only thing she can focus on is her sensei's solemn face.

"But - but Obito didn't do that," she stammers. "He didn't kill me. He didn't kill Kakashi."

"He must have felt like he did," Minato-sensei says gently, like an absolution.

That's right. It didn't matter if Obito had actually killed Kakashi or not, Rin thinks blankly, remembering her best friend in the days after Kannabi.

( _It's my fault_ , she hears despite herself, Obito's tearful voice as clear in her memory as it had been in the cave. I _made you come back._ ) 

The guilt had gotten him anyways.

She swallows. "So Obito had that eye. The... Mangekyo. And you think that using it was what made him - made him the way he is now?"

"The Mangekyo has the power to do things beyond all logic," Minato-sensei says. "Beyond reality. Anything its user wants."

He goes a bit quiet. "...Rin, what did Obito want?"

"He wanted Kakashi back," Rin says without thinking. "He wanted Kakashi to go on and become a legend like he was supposed to be, and..."

 _My life is Kakashi's_.

She freezes.

Minato-sensei just looks at her,. Rin knows what he's implying.

"But he wouldn't have wanted it like this," she says resolutely.

"Rin," he says slowly, "you remember how he was."

"Of course I do!" Rin exclaims, even as she tries her very best not to think about those blank eyes, the slack expression on her best friend's face that had haunted her no matter where she went. Her fists clench at her sides, and distantly, she realizes that for the first time in her life she's _mad_ at her sensei. "But he wouldn't have given up on himself!"

"Rin, please -"

"He wouldn't have left me behind!" 

She hadn't meant to say that.

Rin looks into Minato-sensei's wide eyes. There's a shocked sort of understanding there, blooming alongside what could only be pity _._

 

She runs _._

* * *

 

"...Talking about that is a waste of time, anyways," the boy mutters, not meeting her eyes. Clearly, he had taken her silence in the worst way possible, and she doesn't know what to say to correct him. "I'm not here for that."

"Then..." She prods.

He pauses, like he has work up to whatever he wants to say. "I promised Obito that I would protect you with my life," he says finally.

Rin's eyes widen, despite herself. She hadn't - she never knew that was a part of the story. Some part of her had assumed that she had been a non-entity for that alternate final conversation, like she had apparently been in every other part of this - _his_ distorted retelling of Kannabi Bridge (which she wasn't bitter about, of course she wasn't.)

She... doesn't know how to feel about that. And faced with that now-familiar sensation of uncertainty, of _not knowing_ , she lashes out.

"Is that all what you wanted to tell me?" Rin asks, her voice deceptively steady. "That you care about me now? That you'll protect me like - like I'm some damsel in distress, because Obito made you?"

It's a horrible thing to say. It's immature, it's rude, it's _mean_.

She says it anyways, and lets the ugliness sit there in the air between them.

Her teammate flinches, but that's the most he does.

"No," he says, keeping his calm in a way neither the Kakashi nor Obito she knew could have. "I'm here because I'm going to do those things, but I don't want to do them because of Obito. I want to do them because of you."

She blinks.

"We've been teammates for three years," he tells her with an odd sort of earnestness. "You bandaged my wounds, saved my life more than once, and it took me minutes to decide to leave you behind."

She goes quiet at that, stunned by the frankness of his words. "But Obito convinced you to come back."

"Yeah. He did. I don't think I ever realized how close you and Obito were," he says hoarsely. "But when he was under that rock, he couldn't stop talking about you. I told him that you were out cold, and I swore he was going to pull himself out to make sure you were alright. He told me to protect you with my life."

Of course, none of that had really happened. Rin remembers a very different scene. one that she's desperately trying not to draw parallels from.

(Because if Kakashi had entrusted Obito with the most important thing in his life, and Obito had entrusted Kakashi with protecting _her_ , then -)

She desperately swerves her mind away from that particular train of thought.

But even if it hadn't happened, even if everything she had just heard occured only in the reality of _his_ delusions, that still meant something.

Obito might have left her behind, Rin decides, an odd sensation at the base of her gut. But in his own, twisted way, he had also taken her along with him.

 

* * *

 

Rin's staring at the Memorial Stone when she feels the presence of Minato-sensei behind her, about an hour and a half after when she's sure he had actually found her. She's grateful for that extra time, but she doesn't say it - won't say it.

She tightens her arms around her knees, rocks forward just a bit more, and carefully refuses to look behind her.

"I'm impressed," her sensei says gently. He walks forward and sits down, right next to her, but doesn't get closer. "Most people running out the doors of T&I don't get far at all. It's just a bit suspicious, you know."

"Why is it so easy for you to believe that Obito's gone?" She asks, still staring straightforward.

Minato-sensei goes quiet. They sit in that easy silence for a long moment that seems to tick onto eternity, carefully not looking at each other.

"It isn't," he says heavily. "It really isn't, Rin. If nothing else, trust me on that."

"Then why -" Rin's voice breaks off.

"Why I didn't tell Kakashi that he died a week ago?" Minato-sensei offers. "Why I didn't tell the Yamanaka to probe deeper into his mind, beyond all safety regulated limits?"

A leaden weight pools in her gut, hearing the way her sensei puts it out. But she shoves that aside and clings onto anger. It's immature, maybe, more like something Obito would have done than responsible, kind Rin. But they had been best friends for so long for a reason.

"You called him Kakashi," she says, or maybe accuses.

"Yes," he says calmly. "I did."

Rin hesitates. She doesn't like the uncertainty that hits her, all at once. "Do - do you think that's really him, then?"

"I'm not sure," Minato-sensei admits, with an ease that's almost unfair. "I don't know what to think, Rin."

"Then how can you decide?" She demands, her voice coming out louder than even she expected. "Why did you choose to keep Kakashi and give up Obito?"

"Rin _,_ " he says flatly, and it stops her in her tracks like nothing else because for the first time, there's an undercurrent of cold anger in his voice. She doesn't need to hear more to know she has gone too far. "That's not what I did. I -"

Minato-sensei breaks off, hesitates. "I thought I was going insane in that interrogation room," he confesses, and it comes so unexpectedly takes Rin's breath away. "Kakashi was so real that I wondered if I was the one who wasn't."

"That's why," Rin whispers. "That's why you asked me to tell you everything again."

Minato-sensei nods, a distant look in his eyes. "I went to speak to the Hokage-sama," he says. "I wanted to ask for his final decision considering these uncommon circumstances, He told me that the village needs manpower, above anything else. Losing one member of our team was enough of a blow. Losing two would be crushing. As long as he has his abilities and a functional mind, then the village needs him for the war effort. It doesn't have to be the right mind. As long as it is right enough."

She takes in a breath, long and ragged, because she knows what that means. "And you, Sensei? What do you think?"

"I think," he says, "that it doesn't matter if he's really Kakashi, or Obito, or both, or neither. What matters is that this is all that's holding him together, and I want him to be sane more than I want to be comfortable."

The air goes out of Rin's lungs, but she doesn't argue. She doesn't say anything at all.

"I'm not choosing to give up on Obito, Rin," Minato-sensei says gently. "Maybe after the war, I'll talk to Tsunade-sama and arrange a meeting with the Uchiha elders to understand what this is. When he's a bit less... brittle."

She stares at the gray stone surface in front of her, and hesitates before she speaks.

"They're going to carve Obito's name onto the Memorial Stone, aren't they?"

"I imagine so," Minato-sensei says slowly, clearly thrown off-guard by her question. "No one else knows the truth about what happened on our mission, except Kushina and the Sandaime-sama. And even they -" His expression is unreadable. "They were understandably skeptical. And since there's no proof that Obito is alive, then -"

"I won't say anything, Sensei," Rin interrupts. "I just wanted to know."

"Rin," her sensei asks her gently, "are you alright?"

"It doesn't matter," she tells him, matter-of-fact. "I have to be."

 

* * *

 

"It made me realize that I don't know who you are outside of medical ninjutsu," says the boy in front of her, and hesitates. "I still don't. I was alright with that, before."

Then he says slowly, deliberately, like he has to push out each and every word out with physical force, "I don't think I am anymore."

That gives her pause.

Rin looks at him carefully, this person who is both and neither of her boys at once. He doesn't meet her eyes, like he's afraid of what he would see in them.

She opens her mouth hesitantly, tests the words before she says them out loud.

"Kakashi, is this your way of saying that you want to be friends?"

Her teammate is visibly taken aback by that, his single dark eye open wide. He looks caught somewhere between vehement denial and begrudging agreement, and about thirty seconds from physically running away from the conversation.

And just like that, Rin makes her decision.

"Come to dinner," she says.

He stares at her like she had took a running jump off the deep end. "W-what?"

"I'm making onion curry," Rin repeats, "and there's going to be way too much for just one person to eat. There always is. So come to dinner, and we'll talk about Obito."

"I -"

He visibly wavers, clearly uneasy. Rin stares him down, with a force of will that she knows he can't stand up to.

(He never could. Maybe there were some things didn't change, even when everything else did.)

He looks her in the eyes, and she thinks it's only then that it hits him that she _means_ it.

"...Alright," he says quietly.

"Good," Rin says bluntly, and lets out a breath.

She feels something loosen in her, something that had been there coiled up and tense since the day everything had changed. Things were never going to be normal again, but maybe she had to find a new normal. For both Kakashi and Obito.

She looks at the boy who used to be her best friend, and tries her best to smile.

"But you have to eat my onions."

 

* * *

 

"So," says a voice in the darkness. "This is what my kinsmen have devolved to in my absence. Wasting the most prized possession of our clan on children of civilian stock. _Dying_ children, at that."

There is the sound of approaching footsteps. The prod of a walking stick.

"...Interesting. Living in body but not in mind."

There is a long, long silence.

"Perhaps I can find a use for you after all, boy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: it's meant to be ambiguous exactly what is up with Kakashi/Obito/Kakashibito, for both the characters and y'all. Is he an entirely insane Obito? Is he a confused canon!Kakashi brought into a world he doesn't understand? Or is he something else entirely?
> 
> (Would love to hear your guesses :D There is an answer, more or less, but it won't be coming for a while - not until it's important. The main meat of this fic comes not from the logistics of what's going on, but from the effect this event has on all the characters.)
> 
> Coming up next: the last chapter of Rin POV :O


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